We still need uniqueness within a single inventory! This should be “in any Thief’s inventory” rather than “in another”.

Whoops, good catch! Fixed.

What happens if I go idle, someone else makes a Sheepskin Yellow Pouch, and then I come back?

I suppose that’s a good question in general. What happens if you go idle, the ruleset changes to make some part of your previous gamestate illegal, and then you come back from idle?

I think the answer is that your illegal gamestate would have to be reset to the default value, so in this case, as the person who came back from idle, you’d lose the Pouch entirely as you are the Thief who now has an illegally-named Pouch.

Is it fair? Maybe not, but if this is how we usually resolve illegal gamestate from players who come back from idle, then it’s no more unfair than any other rule.

I think both you and the other person would have illegally named pouches though

Right, but the player who just became unidled would suddenly have their gamestate introduced into the ecosystem, so in my mind, the current ruleset would apply directly to them immediately, as they are the “change” in the gamestate at that moment.

Actually, the ruleset is pretty clear about this, in the section “Idle Thieves”:

When a Thief is unidled, if they went Idle in the same Dynasty, their personal gamestate retains the last legally endowed values it had, if they are still valid. Otherwise (including if a value is invalid, does not exist, or the Thief Idled in a different Dynasty), the Thief is given the default value for new Thieves, if such a value exists.

The ruleset clarification sadly isn’t perfect here: if the unidling player has an inventory list of “Sheepskin Yellow Pouch, Lockpick, Gold Ring”, and the Pouch has an invalid name, what defaults to what? The plainest reading would seem to be that the inventory is invalid so all of it defaults back to blank.

as patchable, though.